Urban Legends
by justfandomwritings
Summary: Maura Watney was on her way to becoming the most famous astronaut in history, and she wanted to bring her brother along for the ride. Mark was stuck on Mars because of her, and she was determined to bring him home. After all, if he was the first human to die on another planet, that would thoroughly steal her thunder; and she couldn't have that.
1. Chapter 1

There's an urban legend about NASA.

In the 60s, the Soviet Union and the United States were deep into what is now called the Space Race. When the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, the first manmade satellite, Americans were wracked with panic. If the Soviet Union could launch a radio satellite into orbit around the Earth, who's to say they couldn't launch a gun?

The space program, NASA, became every Americans top priority. It was a nuclear deterrent, as well as a matter of national pride. If the Soviets had satellites in space hovering over American soil, then America needed satellites in space over Soviet soil. But America couldn't just equal the Soviet Union; America needed to beat the Soviet Union.

When the first astronauts went into space, Soviet-born Yuri Gagarin beating out American-born Alan Shepard by less than a month for the honor of being the first man in space, they encountered a dilemma.

The ballpoint pen was pattented in the United Kingdom during 1938 as an alternative to the dip pen. It was a simple design. The new pen utilized a cartridge of ink attached to a metal ball over which the ink rolled out, allowing the user to write. There was only one problem. The ink was drawn down and fed out of the cartridge over the ball by nothing but the force of gravity. Meaning, in space, there was nothing to draw out the ink; leaving all modern pens effectively useless.

The United States invested $12 million of its funding into designing a pen that would function in zero gravity.

The Soviets just used pencils.

The truth isn't quite as amusing as the legend, but it isn't far off either.

When the United States realized that ballpoint pens were effectively rendered useless by zero gravity, they contracted a company called Tycam Engineering to order a set of 34 mechanical pencils for their next mission. Tycam Engineering charged NASA $4,382… for 34 mechanical pencils. After extensive criticism from the public and within their own departments about the wasteful spending, NASA canceled their order.

The Americans just used pencils.

Eventually, in the late 60s, a privately owned firm called Fisher Pen Company would indeed design a pen that worked in zero gravity. It became known as the Fisher Space Pen. The pen replaced the usual pull of gravity by installing a pressurized ink cartridge that functioned in any environment.

NASA paid $6 per pen for the privilege of writing in ink.

The Soviets paid $8.

Maura tapped her Fisher Space Pen against the edge of her desk.

The amount of work that had been put into this moment, put into her sitting here now, was incalculable. Sure, she could add up the amount of hours she'd put in training. She could find out the amount of time she'd spent out on missions. She could factor in time doing research for her thesis or working on related projects. She could even calculate the opportunity cost of lost wages elsewhere in her field. None of it would give a definitive answer, though.

This moment was so much bigger than her effort and her work, and nothing symbolized that more than her pen. It had a history that went well past her, well past Alan Shepard, well past NASA. This pen spanned the Ares Mission, the International Space Station, Project Apollo, Project Gemini. Every astronaut before her had held one of these pens. The minds at Fisher Pen Company had put hundreds of hours and millions of dollars into designing it, and they had built their work on the minds that came before them.

The Fisher Pen Company could not have pressurized the pen cartridge if countless men and women before them had not perfected the cartridge pen's design, if the Biro brothers who patented the first ballpoint pen in 1938 had not thought to innovate on the dip pen.

The giants of every field today rested on the shoulders of those who came before, and the Fisher Space Pen was no exception. Maura was no exception.

It might be a bit of a stretch to call Fisher Space Pen a giant, but Maura was self aware enough to know that she, in fact, was a giant.

Maura twisted off the pen cap and set it aside with a deep breath. Eight years ago, in 2027, Maura had picked up the very same pen and signed her name to a contract, and now she was doing it again.

"You understand the full personal, professional, and legal ramifications of the contract you are about to sign, Miss Watney?"

Maura looked up at NASA's in-house attorney sitting across from her. He was a feeble man with a bald patch slightly to the right of center atop his head that perfectly matched the shape of the Tycho lunar crater, right down to the tiny tuft of hair that coincided with the peak at its center. They had only met once before, eight years ago, but she remembered him well.

Back then, he had given her a full lecture, two hours long, about the document she was signing, the commitment it entailed. He'd clearly gone lax this time around. Perhaps he wrongly assumed she remembered any of what he'd said.

She couldn't even recall his name when she first walked in the door minutes before. Back in 2027, she was practically shaking with the anticipation of putting her name on the dotted line. She'd had better things to do than think about paperwork. She was going to Mars!

"Don't worry about me, Mr. Levinson." Maura falsely assured him. "I know what I'm getting myself into. I've been here before."

"That you have," Mr. Levinson wheezed out a laugh. "I was excited when they told me you would be leading this new program. It's always good to see some familiar faces on the cover of my cereal box."

Maura chuckled to herself. Her brother had given her hell for those cereal boxes. Whenever NASA forwarded her inbox along to the Hermes, there were always a couple dozen pictures of Mark with the cereal box strategically placed in various spots Maura should have been.

Her birthday? He put it on the table with a cake in front of it. Family beach trip? He covered it in sunscreen and set it in the sand. Dad's retirement party? He brought it along to a black tie event tucked under his arm. Mark somehow managed to talk some of the techies into letting him put the box in the seat next to him while he did his takeoff simulations. He even took the stupid thing as one of his personal items into his isolation chamber for 10 days.

Gem that he was, Mitch Henderson had tagged on the video of Mark talking to the picture of her on the cereal box cover because, as Mark explained, 'What? I got bored of talking to myself.'

Maura's eyes scanned over the contract. She wasn't really reading it. Mr. Levinson knew that, but she needed to pretend for the sake of protocol. "The cereal box was all Annie. She thinks putting us out there in the public eye will increase awareness of NASA programs, and increased funding will follow."

"It's not a bad idea." Mr. Levinson hedged. "It might be good for kids to have successful, intelligent role models for once."

Role models. They'd certainly tried to make Maura into one of those. Weeks upon weeks of PR training. It was worse than the actual astronaut program! That was probably an exaggeration, but it felt like it.

Maura was the Commander of her mission, the face of her team. A face that was going to be everywhere, and not just for a moment. A face that wouldn't just be in history books, but would be on the covers of them.

A face that Annie refused to see dropping the f-bomb during any of the over 200 interviews Maura had been expected to do before take off and certainly not during any of the countless hundred she had done since her return.

Maura's pen paused over the line she was supposed to sign, and a smirk tugged at her lips. "Wait, you were eating the kid's cereal?"

Mr. Levinson spluttered for a moment, but his embarrassment was saved by the door bursting open.

"Mitch?" Mr. Levinson questioned.

Maura turned when she heard Mr. Levinson say the name. The Hermes Flight Director stood in the office doorway looking absolutely terrified.

A cold chill ran up her spine. He didn't need to say anything. Mitch's eyes did all the talking, and she shoved away from Levinson's desk, ignoring as the lawyer shouted, "Miss Watney, we're not done here."

Mitch led her through the halls down into the control room where the usually mild-mannered scientists were in frenzy.

Maura didn't frequent the NASA control room. Her eight years in the program had mostly been spent in training facilities or research labs, but she'd met the staff working the room before. She knew procedure well enough to know that this was unusual, and something was going very wrong.

"What's going on, Mitch." Her tone left no room for questioning.

"We had to scrap the mission earlier today. The winds got too strong. MAV was tipping."

Maura narrowed in on the readouts scrolling up the side of the screen. The wind speed was far too high. "Have they left the surface yet?"

"They haven't yet, and the last updates from the communications system indicate the MAV was tilting too far. They were running out of…" Mitch never got to finish explaining the situation to Maura.

A crackly voice came over the loud speaker, indicating a transmission from Hermes to mission control. "Hermes, this is Commander Lewis. We have successfully docked the MAV and are beginning to route our return to Earth."

Maura felt intense relief fill her only to be washed away by sheer horror.

"Mark Watney was hit by debris en route to the MAV… He… He died on impact and didn't make it to the MAV."

A loud cry split the air, and Maura only realized it had come from her when pain shot up her knees as they gave out and hit the ground.


	2. Chapter 2

Intriguingly, most urban legends about aliens do not feature NASA.

People don't really care that much about whether aliens are roaming around the rest of the universe or even their own galaxy. Perhaps selfishly, humans are only really interested in other intelligent species when the story features Earth.

When they hear rumors of a suspicious aircraft flying around the canyon. When someone claims to have seen a crash site out in the fields. When the town drunk says a flying saucer took him away in the night. When the government is a little too secretive about what's going on behind the closed doors of a military installation.

That's when people pay attention. When they think their picture perfect, cookie cutter lives might be affected. Whether that affect is better or worse, or simply more interesting.

To be fair, often times people only pay attention to the claims in passing. Rarely if ever, do people actually deem an alien abduction story credible. Even videos of suspicious lights circling overhead are usually written off as photoshop. Still, they take the time to listen, and that's more thought than the average man or woman ever really gives to the rest of space.

When people hear about suspicious UFOs, whether obviously fiction, easily explainable, or somewhat plausible, people immediately direct their eye to the Air Force.

NASA is way up there in the great unknown, so when a flying object is inside the Earth's atmosphere, when people can see it with their own eyes, they turn to the military for answers and explanations. Even if the explanation they're hoping for is "Yep, Martians are real," they'll still question the nearest MAJCOM of the USAF during his next press conference before they ask the Director of NASA.

Even when there wasn't a story to cover, even when it was just curiosity, no one in their right mind ever asked the Director of NASA if aliens were real. For fear, obviously, of sounding like a complete and utter idiot.

Unless, that person was Maura Watney.

"Please, for the love of God, tell me you're saying aliens." Maura whispered under her breath. She knew what they were really saying. It just wasn't something she wanted to hear, wasn't something she was willing to consider.

Maura had been to Mars. She knew there was no such thing as Martians, or at least, she was pretty sure. At this point, she would be willing to consider anything, and it seemed there were only two possibilities. 1) Little green men burrowing out of holes no one had previously noticed in the surface of the red planet and parading around the camp, or 2) The Worst.

The alternative to aliens was such a crushing prospect that her mind simply refused to accept it. Even though it was the only plausible explanation.

"This," the nameless Sat Com lifted her control and scrolled back through to the first image, "is the state in which Commander Lewis's report confirms she left the camp. This picture is from just before the storm that caused the evacuation."

The woman's thumb rolled over the arrow to pull up the next one in the sequence. "This is the most recent photo we have of the Ares III sight."

It was plain as day. The solar panels had been cleaned. Mars's harsh winds could have easily accomplished that. But the rover. The monstrous white blob on the surface of the planet had visibly shifted several hundred feet from one side of the HAB to the other, and no wind could move that.

"So you're telling me…" Maura trailed off. She couldn't speak the thought into existence. If she spoke it, she couldn't take it back.

Teddy Sanders reached over the high back of the conference room chair to rest a hand on Maura's tensed shoulders. "We have to release the photos within the next seventeen hours. We'll be releasing a confirmatory statement with them. It will be all over the news, but we thought you would want to know first."

Maura hung her head. "How long have you known?" Her voice was low, almost dangerous as it spat out the words with a venom.

"Mindy discovered the discrepancy between the logs and the photos on the 3 A.M. shift. Since then, we've been prepping for the public outcry. You were the first person we brought in." For a PR person, Annie Montrose truly failed in choosing her words.

"That _'discrepancy' _," Maura spat, "is my brother." Shoving away from the table, there was a grunt as her chair ran over the foot of Director Sanders hovering behind her. "And you left him on Mars."

Maura was fuming as she stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her so hard she heard a picture, on the wall inside, shatter as it hit the ground.

Her fury lasted about as long as it took her to walk to the end of the hall where she crumpled in a pile of tears.

* * *

"Sweetpea," Her mother's voice sounded weepy on the other end of the phone, but that was to be expected.

"Ma," Maura's voice broke as she spoke into the receiver.

There was a shuffle and some sniffling. Her father cut in. "Maura, I thought you said you were coming to stay for a while. I thought NASA gave you time off to be here." Her parents' desperate plea wasn't lost on Maura. Their son was never coming home; they at least wanted their daughter back.

Her parents had always thought if one of them wasn't going to come back it was going to be Maura. It wasn't just that she went first. It was how much she loved the work.

She was consumed by it. Consumed by space so whole-heartedly that her parents wouldn't have been surprised if she opened the hatch and let the blackness swallow her whole, simply to be the first human to touch the nothingness.

Maura took extensive notes, updated daily diaries, sent emails constantly, detailing every aspect of her time in space. Everything was an adventure to her. Even the tedious task of putting on her suit was a marvel that filled her with utter glee. Her parents were in the loop on all that was happening, and she explained the goings on every step of the way.

By the time the more relaxed Mark launched, Mars seemed a bit old hat. They were proud of him, of course. He was leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of his field. He was boasted and bragged about to anyone who would listen. But he had a freedom and trust Maura never had.

Mark didn't need to explain space flight because Maura had already given them a thorough summary. Life, analyses, reports, training, Maura had done it all before. They knew Mark to tell them if anything changed, and they were comforted by the fact that he would remain level-headed about the experience. Certainly, he wouldn't squeal when he stepped on the surface of his second planet.

Their parents knew what to expect, knew what he was doing, and because nothing happened to Maura, they were sure he would be okay.

How wrong they were. When Maura landed at the airport in a small private plane chartered by NASA, they knew something was up. When she collapsed into her father's arms and sobbed, they figured it was big. And when Mark's name had finally choked out of her lips, they put the pieces together.

This would be worse. Maura was sure of it.

They were still grieving. They'd had a funeral, figuratively buried their son. They were waiting for her to join them in their sorrow and healing. And now she was going to have to tell them she wasn't coming. And she was going to have to tell them why.

She would be the one to tell her parents that their pain wasn't over, that it would be prolonged for several slow, torturous months. That their son's death wasn't going to be swift.

"Pops, I can't come home." Maura croaked out through a throat cracked and sore from days of crying. "I have some news."

"I don't think we can take much more news from NASA." Her father heaved a sigh that spoke volumes to how much he was trying to hold it together for the rest of his family.

"Pops, get Ma back on the phone with you." Maura instructed. She was braced for impact. She needed to get it out before she broke down.

"Donna!" Maura heard her father shout.

Her mom must have run from the phone when she handed it off to her dad. It made sense. Not once in her life had she ever called Maura Sweetpea. Terms of endearment were well assigned in the Watney household. Her parents were always Ma and Pops, but they called each other Darling and Honey when they were feeling romantic. Maura was always, without fail, Princess. And Mark, despite his many objections, had always been Sweetpea.

Even knowing where he was, her mom was holding onto some desolate hope that Mark was alive, that Mark could call.

In a way, Ma was right, but that was even worse news.

"I'm sorry, Princess," Her mother rejoined the call with a hiccup. "I'm just…"

"It's fine, Ma." Maura didn't think she could bear hearing anything about how they were doing before she got this out and ruined whatever small peace the memorial service had given them. "I need to tell you both something."

"What is it?" Her father asked, far too close to the speaker.

"I know neither of you have read the report about how..." She tried to think of a better way to say it. "On what happened," she settled. "And I know you don't want to know, but I'm going to have to explain a small part of it to you."

"Maura, we don't…"

Maura cut off her father's objections with a volume that bordered on shouting. "You do. You need to know, whether it's nice or not. And it needs to come from me. This is important, Pops."

Her parents quieted then. None of the Watneys really had a temper. They were all 'long fuse' type people, but clearly Maura's had been burning for far too long.

"Mark was hit by a piece of debris which NASA believes broke off of an antenna." Maura took in a deep breath. She needed to remain calm, or at the very least her voice did. "Vital signs in the space suits are transmitted to a received on the arm of the team doctor, who read that Mark didn't show any signs of life."

It was her father's tears that interrupted her this time. She couldn't see them, but Maura knew they were there when he spoke. "Why are you telling us this, Maura? We don't want to know."

"Because Pops, something's… come up." She didn't know a better way to say it than that. "Imagery of the Ares III site seems to show signs of activity and maintenance that were not performed by the crew on the day of their departure."

Silence. Utter silence.

"What…" Mom.

"Are you…" Dad.

"That…" Mom.

"Are you…." Dad.

"What does that even mean?" Her mom finally got out the question they were both trying to say.

"The only logical theory is that when the antenna broke off, it somehow managed to break Mark's vital monitor either by piercing his suit without actually breaking the seal or by having a direct impact that broke both his communication and vitals monitor, or possibly both." Another deep breath. "Whatever the case, there are signs of movement at the HAB since the crews departure…"

Finally she got to her point. She spoke the thought into existence, "Mark's alive. Mark's alone on Mars."


	3. Chapter 3

There were a great many urban legends about ghosts, and Maura knew them all.

When she and Mark were still very young, they would go camping all the time with their parents. Donna and Barry Watney encouraged their children to be active and resourceful and would often drag the pair out to various national parks or rural regions of the country to try their hand in the great outdoors, an exploration-themed pastime they would take to the extreme later in life.

While they eventually found a love for it that took them out of this world, neither was particularly persuaded by the initial proposition. The two kids were only convinced to come along on their parents' excursions because their parents always brought a telescope, and they took turns, away from the city lights, to look at the stars.

They had contests to see who could name more of them, and their dad officiated the score. Maura knew now that her dad had never taken an astronomy class, and thinking back on it she was pretty sure he just took it in turns to say which of them won the game that trip without any real thought. Not that she was complaining, she'd won the last time they all went camping together when she was fifteen, so as far as she was concerned she was the reigning champion forever.

Maura and Mark made competitions of everything. If there was something to be done than there was something to be won. One of them would get a higher grade on the test. One of them would read more books. One of them would win their chess game. Hell, one of them would take out the garbage faster. No matter how obvious, no matter how suited, no matter how mundane, everything was a challenge to be won. Theirs was not a rivalry restricted to games.

They were each other's greatest foes, but also each other's greatest fans.

Outside of House Watney, it was Mark and Maura against the world. They could beat each other all they wanted, but the minute one of them lost to some outside force the other appeared, as if out of thin air. Maura managed to figure out the password for a teacher's computer and changed the scores at the science fair so her brother could beat Jason Richter for the first place prize. Mark once hiked four miles roundtrip, through woods in the dead of night, from his cabin at a boys' summer camp to his sisters' summer camp cabin on the other side of the park just to deliver Maura his superior calculator to win a meaningless, trophyless math tournament.

Of course, no win was meaningless to the Watney siblings, especially not over each other. There was always a lot at stake. Bragging rights were always up for grabs, and teasing was incessant for the loser.

On their camping trips, the competitive streak extended far beyond the telescope. Out in the wilderness, far away from books and internet, the pair would sit around a campfire seeing who could tell the scarier story.

They started out judging the competition on how scared the other person looked, but that had only led to arguments about who had more goosebumps or who's eyes scanned the woods more often. Arguments made significantly worse by the fact that Mark was a much, much better actor than Maura, and therefore much better at hiding his fear. At their mother's suggestion, they had turned to counting how much sleep the other person lost.

An ingenious suggestion on their mother's part that Maura would look on years later as an A+ parenting strategy. To begin, they both wanted to go to bed early, whether they were tired or not, so they could say they got more sleep than the other. Plus, sharing a tent, they couldn't call the other person out on being awake without proving they were awake themselves, leading to many silent and peaceful nights in the campground.

It took truly terrifying tales to get either of the Watney children to flinch in their pretense of sleep, and Mark had eventually, after years of stories, won the game with a ghost story he made up himself set in their very camp.

Maura remembered the moment she peaked out between her eyelids and saw her brother dozing. Clearly, genuinely asleep.

It pained her to admit she was freaked out by his story, but she finally shook him awake and confessed.

"I don't know where you heard about that girl or if it's true, but I can't sleep."

Mark had sympathetically patted the space next to him in his sleeping bag, and Maura curled into her brother for protection. "Don't worry, Maura," he soothed. "It's just an urban legend."

He let her have her moment of weakness that night, but in the morning the victory dance was unbearable.

Maura felt as though she was the one living the ghost story. Only this time, Mark wasn't there to comfort her. He was the ghost. Her every waking moment was haunted and plagued by thoughts of him.

When she woke up, she saw him sitting on the couch of her hotel room. When she got out of the shower, he was watching the tv she'd forgotten to turn off. When she got in her car, he was in the passenger seat.

In a way, it was better that he was alive. Because of course it was; she wanted nothing more than for him to be alive. In another way, it was worse. He was dead on Mars no matter what; it would've been less painful if the antenna did him in.

Her eyes stared unseeingly at the news playing over the cafe's television as her mind counted down.

Two and a half minutes left.

The tv had been on ESPN when she walked in, but a quiet word from Maura to the woman behind the register had seen the channel changed, much to the disappointment of a group of men in suits sitting at the counter.

One had even turned to complain to her about ruining their SportsCenter lunchbreak, but he quickly shut up when he caught sight of who he was about to confront.

"My condolences, Commander Watney," the man turned back to the counter and didn't look back at her booth again.

His friends all glanced surreptitiously over their shoulders at her throughout their meal, but she was used to it. Not the pity in their eyes, that was a new addition.

Being watched had become a part of her every day life on Earth. It was part of why Maura was so eager to go back to space. In space, the only eyes were her crew and the stars.

Today though, it was oddly comforting. They were voyeurs more than anything. Maura knew they only cared to a degree, but it was a degree more than her hotel pillow was capable of caring.

The press conference was slated to start any moment. Maura desperately needed someone to care, but she'd rather take the passive curiosity of strangers than Annie Montrose's calculating eye or Mitch Henderson's guilt ridden conscience.

Maura spent most of her time in Florida working at Launch Control or doing promotional press and the rest of her time in D.C. campaigning for NASA funding. She had an apartment not far from the Kennedy Space Center and a best friend who lived just inside the Maryland state line. The last time she'd spent any real time in Houston had been as an AsCan, when NASA put her up in a dorm with other potential candidates. Since training ended, Maura had only really visited Texas for a meeting here or there.

The only people she knew in Texas worked in the upper echelon of NASA, and after the news they'd dropped on her, spending time crying on their shoulder was even less appealing than her grubby hotel room. The company of strangers would have to do.

Somewhere in her mind, Maura registered as the news clicked over to NASA, and the man who'd offered his sympathy began to order the waitress to turn it off.

"No," Maura called just loud enough to be heard. "It's important."

The waitress leaned back against the counter to watch, and it seemed, as if drawn by some unknown magnetism to her pain every other patron in the room quieted down enough to hear the words.

"We're now joining the press conference live where NASA's Chief Director, Teddy Sanders, has an announcement."

The newscaster spoke over Teddy introducing himself as the director mouthed an introduction only heard by those in the room.

The volume cut to NASA just in time to hear, "There's no easy way to put this, but we have reason to believe Mark Watney is alive."

The silence was deafening for a long beat before the world around her exploded.

—

The first call was from an old school friend.

Jenny has been watching the news when it was announced, and she'd called right away. Naively, worried that Maura didn't know she hadn't wanted her to hear from a stranger.

Calls two through six had come in while she was on the phone with Jenny.

Maura didn't return any of them.

She answered call number fourteen, ten minutes later. It was her favorite professor, Dr. Armstrong, a name which had an irony was not lost on Maura. He was the head of the Computer Science department during her undergraduate degree, and he'd had her back once every semester to speak to classes about all the places their degree could take them. Needless to say, his classes featuring her were very popular.

Call fifteen and sixteen came in the twenty minutes they were talking. Dr. Armstrong hadn't asked her how she was doing. He probed at what was being done and if anything could be done to help.

Call twenty-three had been her neighbor in Florida. Maria Ramirez was the opposite, desperately worried about whether or not Maura was okay.

Those were the only calls Maura answered on Day One. After telling Maria for the millionth time that she would survive the night, Maura had hung up to another twelve missed calls.

"I want to marry whoever invented the do not disturb button," Maura grumbled, pressing the cresent moon and tossing her phone into the corner of the room to leave her undisturbed for the rest of the day.

She answered the first call on Day Two. In large part because Maura didn't know who it was.

"This is Maura." She said, catching the phone between her shoulder and ear.

"Maura?" It wasn't exactly a question, but the hesitation in the voice made it sound like one. "Th-This is Amy Beck."

Maura had only met Dr. Beck once, on the launch pad before he piled in to be launched into orbit with her brother. Their entire exchange had been "Good luck, Dr. Beck." and "Thank you, Commander Watney.", so they hadn't really had time to get into personal matters like exchanging family contact information.

"I-I got your number from Mitch Henderson."

"Well that explains a lot," Maura grumbled, not really bothering to hide her displeasure from the woman on the other end of the line. "What can I do for you?"

"I was actually hoping we could talk… In person?" Amy hedged.

Maura sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. A wife of one of the Ares II crew had hung her up for nearly six hours asking all kinds of questions about the trip to Mars, and she really was in no mood to go through that again. "Unfortunately, I'm in Houston at the moment…"

"I know," Amy cut in quickly. "I live in Houston, myself. I was hoping we could meet for coffee? Only quickly, it would have to be for my lunch break."

Now that was a time constraint Maura could reasonably see to.

"All right. Tell me when and where."

"Any day you like, around 1 oclock, at Al Vetros? It's near my work."

"Tomorrow then."

"So what is it you wanted to talk about? I regret to inform you that a lunch break isn't long enough to explain how the engine aboard the Hermes functions."

A quick browse through Facebook had shown Maura Amy's picture, though admittedly nothing else with the woman's stringent privacy settings. It gave Maura complete confidence when she walked in that she'd spotted the right woman at the two seater by the window, plopping down into the seat opposite to begin without hesitation.

"No, no," Amy, somewhat befuddled by Maura's abruptness, quickly responded, "I don't think there's any hope in me understanding any of that. I never liked physics. Or the stars for that matter, I don't have any ambition to go into a vacuum where a piece of glass is all that stands between me and death."

"Then what did you want me to help you with?" Maura's eyebrows creased together.

"I was hoping I might be the one to help you." Amy leaned forward with her elbows on the table, not quite whispering but certainly speaking low enough to avoid any eavesdroppers, "Mitch called and told me all about Mark before it hit the news. I figured you wouldn't want to leave Houston while NASA was monitoring him."

"You figured right." Maura heaved a sigh, "The Holiday Inn staff have been overly kind to me given the circumstances."

Amy dug around in her pocket for a moment before pulling out a key ring. "Yes, Mitch mentioned. I thought you might want something a little more homey, and a little less expensive than a long-term stay in a hotel."

Maura eyed the key but made no move to grab it. "I can't take that."

"And why not?" Amy set the key on the table and slid it across to the space in front of Maura. "I like to think you would accomodate me if my brother was trapped on Mars, and I have a spare room so it's really no inconvenience."

Maura fingered the jagged edge of the key with a thoughtful hand. She really, really couldn't accept this. "I don't think you understand what you're offering here. My brother had 50 days worth of rations for his whole crew. Assuming he does absolutely nothing to extend or improve his food supply, my worst case scenario sees my brother dying in a year. My best case scenario, Mark manages to extend or add to his food supply and by some miracle we get him back in a few years when Ares IV goes to Mars."

Amy pretended to think it over, but Maura could tell the woman was just humoring her. "Yep," Amy gave a lazy smile. "Still haven't changed my mind."

"I'm not leaving Houston till he dies or comes back alive. That's anywhere from 300 days to 5 years from now."

"Yep." Amy popped the last 'p' letter, then leaned forward and pushed the key into Maura's palm. "I hope you don't mind the sound of violin music. I don't play or anything; I just really like watching Sherlock."


	4. Chapter 4

'What's in a name?' For a rose, not much. Roses weren't sentient beings. Being called a rose didn't shape them in any way. They didn't respond to their name. They didn't know they were called roses. They didn't have personalities or lives that were in any way shaped by experiences tied to that name.

A rose would smell as sweet by any other name because a rose wasn't conscious to choose how sweet it smelled.

A person, in fiction or in life, did not have that luxury.

Names held great power and sway over minds.

Sure, if you chanted Bloody Mary in the bathroom mirror three times no woman was going to miraculously appear over your reflection's shoulder to kill you. But every bump for the rest of the night, every creak of the house settling, hoot of an owl outside, thud of a family member on a midnight snack run, was going to unsettle you.

The woman showing up to kill you would mean that she had the power, but your frightened attentiveness proves her name holds a weight all its own.

In reality, names can hold just as much sway. They shape who we are. They influence our friends, our attitudes, our lives. They are by far the most important thing in your life over which you have no say.

Unless of course, we're talking about nicknames.

Then again, most people don't get any say over those either.

* * *

Maura and Amy came to a quick and surprisingly easy understanding.

Like her brother, Amy was a doctor. Though Amy had no ambition of going to space, she applied her trade to similarly impressive, groundbreaking fields. She was, as Maura only learned after weeks of living with her, one of the country's foremost leaders in cancer research, a job that had brought her to MD Anderson, and by extension Houston.

While the hours weren't quite as hectic as running shifts in a hospital, Amy still found herself in and out of the apartment at odd, though thankfully predetermined times.

At the beginning of each week, Amy would walk into the kitchen and paste a magnetic calendar to the fridge detailing her schedule for the week and when she would be out of the apartment.

Maura used this as a template to work out when she could take over the living room. While she'd been staying there, Maura had preferred working from the hotel room, and that continued when she'd moved in with Amy. There were too many eyes at NASA, curiously watching her every move. Every mouth went still when she walked in the room, and on more than one occasion, Maura had walked down the hall to find coworkers pressing ears to the door of the office she'd commondiered, trying to listen in on her.

The hotel had been easy and convenient to turn into one massive office, the apartment less so.

Maura was acutely aware of the favor Amy was doing for her and just how above and beyond she had gone for a woman she'd never met. Maura had to help her brother, but she didn't want to repay Amy's support by trashing her place.

Maura "borrowed" a rolling whiteboard and several rolling supply carts from the Space Center. Knowing when Amy would be out, Maura could spread her supplies all over the apartment and pack them away just in time for her roommates return.

Amy would, quite regularly, walk in to find Maura only just rolling the last cart back into her room. In which case, she would always ask, "Anything?"

And Maura, unable to bear answering out loud, would shake her head.

It was on one particularly rare occasion that Amy came home early and found Maura sitting on the floor surrounded by maps of what appeared to be Mars surface.

Amy was by no means a ninja, but most people would've thought she was because her entrance to the room didn't seem to wake Maura from her papers at all. She could've let her keep working. Amy actually considered slipping past and saying nothing. Maura's concerted efforts to clean up before Amy got home were largely unnecessary. Amy didn't really mind the mess. What she minded a great deal was Maura seemingly working herself to death, and that glazed look to her eye was what changed Amy's mind.

Amy let her bag hit the carpet with a loud thud.

Maura's head jerked up. "Oh, sorry, I didn't know it was so late. I'll clean up."

"No, I'm early." Amy waves away the suggestion and joined Maura cross legged on the floor. "Any progress?"

Maura wordlessly shook her head and diverted her eyes back to the map she was clutching in her hands. "He's still on the move, has been every day."

"Maybe it's just an extended test run?" Amy suggested. "You said it would take a significant amount of planning to get to Ares IV."

Maura unclenched her fists folding the map in front of her and laid it out on the floor between her and her friend. "Some people at NASA think that," Maura nodded, "but I don't." She traced a circle around the Ares III site, "Before he embarked, Mark drove this loop on a charging cycle, always staying within walking distance of the HAB."

Amy followed Maura's finger carefully, "So he was making sure his vehicle functioned properly?"

Maura snapped and pointed a finger to Amy, "Exactly! But why? That's the question we're all arguing over. Some people at NASA think the loop was just a quick check to see if his adjustments worked, and that this drive is meant to be a long-haul test for Ares IV."

"And you?" Amy prompted.

Maura ran a shaking hand through her hair with a heavy sigh. "My brother's too intelligent for that. I mean, I could buy that he would do a longhaul test to get estimates of the rover's power supply and capabilities, but he was so cautious the first time to stay at a distance where he could save himself. He wouldn't just abandon that. If this were a test, he'd have stayed in close to the HAB. I think the laps around the HAB were prep for this drive, not Ares IV."

"Maybe," Amy pondered for a moment. It's not that she thought she could come up with anything new; she wasn't the rocket scientist after all. Amy imagined Maura had thought of everything by now. She really just hoped that she could be an ear for Maura's ideas. "Maybe, he wanted to try it over different terrain? You said the Ares III site is flat, right?"

"Then why wouldn't he go this way?" With her pen, Maura lined a rough path towards Ares IV. "Wouldn't you naturally head in the direction of your end goal? Any little bit of practice helps; he wouldn't waste it heading the opposite direction."

Then a thought occurred to Amy. "You say you've all been arguing over 'why' he's doing this right?"

"Yeah," Maura tossed the map back into the piles scattered around the floor.

"Well maybe that's the wrong question." Amy snatched up the map Maura had just abandoned and held it up for her. "If he was going the other direction, you wouldn't be questioning it. You would assume it was a test run because that's the direction of Ares IV."

"Right." Maura didn't really see where this was going.

Amy snatched up a sharpie off the mess on the ground and drew a generically straight line towards Ares IV, not at all the path Mark would have to take but it made a point. "You would never ask 'the why' if he'd gone this direction because you know 'the what'. So start asking yourself 'what' is he going to down there that's more important than Ares IV."

There was a moment of silence. Maura stared at the aerial photo of Mars Amy was clutching in her hands. Her expression was, for that long pause, entirely unmoving. Her chest didn't rise or fall. She didn't blink. To Amy, it was like someone hit the pause button on her roommate.

And then, all at once, they were in fast forward.

Maura threw herself across the floor, grabbed Amy's bag and shoved it into her hands. "Drive."

"Where are we going?" Amy asked.

Maura was in a flurry, snatching a folder off the couch, grabbing a map from her cart that was almost as tall as she was, and ripping the Sharpie from Amy's hand.

"NASA."

Maura raced out of the apartment at top speed, and Amy didn't ask question, only followed hot on her heels.

Maura didn't even notice. Her hands were tearing through her pockets till the moment she sat down in the car.

"My phone, damnit!" She finally pulled it out of her back pocket as Amy cranked the car.

"Henderson!" Amy was sure whoever Maura called must've been on speed dial because no human could type as fast as she got that man on the phone. "Meet me in Meeting Room 13A with Kapoor, Sanders, and Montrose." The usual pause of one-sided conversations followed. "Yes, it's important! I'm on my way in now. Tell the gate I'm coming."

As Henderson went to hang up, Maura shouted down the phone, "And get JPL on the line!"

* * *

"Please state your name and purpose for your…"

"She's with me." Maura cut off the guard, shoving her pass across the driver's seat into his hand.

Amy sat as far back as her seat allowed and stared straight ahead with bug-eyed horror.

"Miss Watney," The security officer ducked down to check that it was, in fact, her. "Apologies." He handed back the pass and waved their car through.

* * *

"So you're going to be, like, famous."

Maura snorted, immediately followed by a pained groan as she felt her beer going up instead of down her throat. "Yeah, I guess," she wheezed. "But not in the celebrity way."

"No," Mark rolled his eyes, "in the 'my-face-will-be-on-the-cover-of-history-textbooks' sort of way. Poor you," he mocked sympathy.

Maura stole a cheese covered fry from Mark's plate and made a show of dropping it into her mouth. "Yep," she smacked down with a smug grin.

"Do you get to pick your nickname?" Mark asked. He grabbed his next cheese-coated fry and inelegantly slurped the sticky yellow sauce off his fingers as he talked. "Cause you don't want it to be something weird. It's going to be under your headshot for millennia."

Maura hadn't really thought about her nickname. She hadn't thought about millennia either. She'd been far too present in the here and now to think to think past the news she'd received that morning. She hadn't made it to customizing her spacesuit yet, and she definitely hadn't confronted the fact that soon, very soon, every human alive, potentially every human for the rest of forever, would learn her name.

She was a bit busy confronting the contract NASA's in-house attorney had just made her sign. A boring suit in a back office at Johnson Space Center had been the one to confirm it for her, 'Congratulations, Miss Watney. You've been named Commander of Ares I. It seems you will be the first person to set foot on Mars.' The finer details like eternal glory and monogrammed jackets hadn't really crossed her mind yet.

"Why don't you pick one for me?" Maura stole another cheese fry. She felt like she'd earned it.

Mark thought about it for a second. "Well you could just go with Princess. It's worked for you this long."

Maura glowered.

"Fine, fine," Mark dismissed. "You could play up the space theme, go with something like Nova or Andromeda." Even as he said it, Mark started shaking his head, thinking better of it. "Nova's overused, and people might mistake it for your real name. Then you wouldn't be the famous one. Plus, Andromeda's a mouthful. Gotta have something those little first graders can spell out on their pop quizzes."

"Do first graders get pop quizzes?" Maura laughed under her breath. Mark pretended not to notice, and Maura didn't press the issue. She'd let him have his fun.

"You could play up being first!" Mark faked excitement. "What about Gold or Alpha, maybe Uno!" He clapped his hands like a child on Christmas.

Maura arched an eyebrow and waggled a fry, soggy with cheese, in his face. "Don't think I won't throw this at you."

"War?" He pushed with a smirk. "Ya know, because Ares is."

The fry flew out of her hand and smacked Mark across the cheek.

"Hey! I wasn't done! I'm full of great ideas!"

Maura snickered all the way to the bathroom to wash her hands, her brother shouting nicknames after her as she went.

"A tribute to Mars then. Big Red?" He called out. "What about Pathfinder, first rover, first human?"

In the end, her team had named her Skywalker. She wasn't sure if it was a compliment or not.

Maura stormed into the room already unrolling the map under her arm as she went.

* * *

Amy followed sheepishly behind. It wasn't that she felt out of place. She'd spent her life dealing with high pressure situations. That sort of setting wouldn't phase her, and neither would the company. She wouldn't have made a very good doctor if an important director or important decisions made her clam up.

It was more the banging down doors and disturbing what was an otherwise serious atmosphere that wasn't Amy's forte.

"This is Dr. Beck." Maura didn't turn around. Already her attention was stolen away by magnetting her massive map to the massive whiteboard taking up the back wall. "No, not the one who's up in space, his sister. Who as it happens, has just figured out what my brother is doing."

"She has?"

"I have?"

The questions came up from Teddy and Amy.

Amy knew it was Teddy Saunders because she'd met Mitch Henderson on several occasions, and Vincent Kapoor once. Annie Montrose did the usual NASA press conferences, including the one where Amy's brother was announced as a member of Ares III; Amy kept a recording of it saved to her computer. She didn't understand his interest, but she was proud of him nonetheless.

Teddy's face had only graced Amy's tv once. Watching the announcement that Mark Watney was alive.

"She has." Maura turned. "You have," She smiled at Amy.

Maura produced Amy's stolen sharpie from her pocket and turned back to her map. The cap had ruptured from the ill-treatment Maura had given it on the drive over, and dark blue ink was slowly leaking out over Maura's fingers, not that she noticed.

Standing on her toes, she drew a circle around the top corner of the map. From their usually brief conversations and the simple process of osmosis, Amy knew it was Ares III's campsite.

Maura extended the line down a few inches across the paper then paused to draw an arrow.

Amy was smart enough to guess that was where Mark was now.

Then she continued the line down to the bottom corner of the paper and drew a massive X.

Turning back around, Maura stabbed the tip of her marker into the crosshairs. "He's going for Pathfinder."

A crackling speaker in the center of the table announced another member of their gathering. "Oh God."

"Bruce," Maura braced herself against the wood. "Can you get it working on our end?"

"Yeah, but there's no telling what state it'll be in when Mark gets there."

"He'll fix it." Maura said.

"It'll take a lot of work. Pathfinder's been abandoned up there for decades without any kind of maintenance." Bruce contradicted.

Maura leaned over the intercom and said with unwavering certainty. "He'll fix it."


End file.
